White House: $550 million in student debt to be reduced for more than 11,000 Oklahomans

President Joe Biden’s latest action to cancel a portion of student loan debt will erase nearly $550 million owed by 11,530 Oklahomans, the White House said Tuesday.

The U.S. Department of Education began notifying eligible borrowers on Friday and the debt discharges are expected to begin 30 days after emails are sent. The forgiveness is only for low-income borrowers who have been paying on their income-driven repayment plans for 20 years or more.

The White House said more than $39 billion would be canceled for 804,000 borrowers nationwide under the “fixes” to the income-driven repayment plans. Borrowers will be notified by their loan service when the debt is discharged, the White House said.

The relief for Oklahoma borrowers is estimated to total $548.4 million for the 11,530 borrowers.

More: Biden has another plan for mass student loan forgiveness. It could be excruciatingly long

The automatic debt cancellation is not related to the much broader forgiveness plan proposed by Biden that would have canceled $10,000 for borrowers with annual income below $125,000 and up to $20,000 for low-income Pell Grant recipients. That plan was struck down last month by the U.S. Supreme Court. About 172,000 Oklahomans had applied for that relief, which would have cost an estimated $400 billion over 10 years.

The Biden administration has pledged to pursue another avenue to cancel debt, but that process could take years to play out.

According to the White House, payments made under the income-driven repayment plans should have moved some borrowers closer to forgiveness but were not properly taken into account. The administration implemented a payment count adjustment in April 2022.

Biden said Friday, “Starting today, over 800,000 student loan borrowers who have been repaying their loans for 20 years or more will see $39 billion of their loans discharged because of steps my Administration took to fix failures of the past.

“These borrowers will join the millions of people that my Administration has provided relief to over the past two years — resulting in over $116 billion in loan relief to over 3 million borrowers under my Administration.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Under new Biden plan, 11,000 Oklahomans could get student debt relief